One reason customer outreach efforts fall short in today’s environment is that sales people are hopelessly overstretched. They spend must an enormous amount of time prospecting on their own. Otherwise, sales pipelines dry up.

But sales professionals won’t reach their potential unless they are allowed to truly specialize, particularly when they are engaged in a strategic and complex sale.

Top performing companies are taking a new approach. Instead of expecting their sales people to manage business development from initial engagement through the close of a sale, they are now segmenting their sales organizations into specialists focused on Client Discovery – creating demand – and Client Development – creating value.

Indeed, they’ve empowered their field sales professionals, strengthened their sales pipelines and seized new opportunities for growth. They are changing the game. Instead of running conventional telesales or “lead gen” campaigns, they run Discovery Sequences – engaging prospective buyers through rich, relevant and value-focused interactions that set the stage for highly productive Client Development efforts.

Confronted with lengthening sales cycles and rising barriers to revenue, tomorrow’s market winners will be those who expertly cultivate new clients even as they leverage sales assets and talent to their fullest. But none of this will occur without first rethinking how we manage outreach and engage new prospects. As sales performance leaders are already demonstrating, the path to profitable growth begins with Client Discovery.

I was a guest expert recently on a webinar that was co-hosted by  The Outsourcing Institute and 3forward on the topic of creating qualified opportunities (and not just a bunch of questionable leads). Over 250 CEOs, Sales and Marketing execs, and Sales Managers signed up for the webinar to listen to our discussion on topics such as:

- why less than 25% of leads result in an initial discussion

- why only 16% of leads deemed “sales-ready opportunities” actually close and what this means for your sales pipeline

- where lead generation belongs in today’s selling organizations and when to consider outsourcing this key function.

Below is a link to the presentation, but here are my key takeaways:

1) the old sales model of expecting sales to find and qualify leads is out.

2) the new sales model is that the responsibility for finding qualified leads is either owned by marketing or companies outsource it to a firm like mine.

3) know your target market, focus on right prospects with right message aimed at where they are at in buying cycle, not where you are at in the sales cycle.

4) extreme qualifying to walk away from opportunities that are not ideal; get better at prioritizing the opportunities you are spending time, money, and resources on.

5) leverage social media and content marketing in your lead generation efforts to increase reach, bring attention to your solutions, and to research likely prospects.

To view the presentation or download the slides, click here:

http://3forward.com/events/creating-qualified-opportunities-sales-leader-telebriefing-2/#

When a new lead generation or marketing campaign is kicked off, it’s natural to want to see quick results, especially when you are falling short of your sales quotas. I was reminded of this today when a client asked if we could kick off a new campaign in order to schedule appointments for next week. If we’re really lucky, we’ll connect with decision makers live and get some appointments within the first few days of calling. However, experience has shown me that it will take 7-12 calls and multiple emails before engaging with an executive who is overbooked and rarely answers his/her own phone. Generating leads takes not only skill, it takes patience and persistence!

The same is true for calculating ROI on lead generation and marketing campaigns. There is a temptation, I think, to look at results prematurely to determine return on investments made. It’s like planting seeds to grow a tree, and then 2 weeks later digging it up to see if it’s growing. That’s really not a very good way to grow a tree!

A wonderful case in point – one of our largest clients just announced a new multi-million dollar contract they signed last week with a big healthcare system. And guess what? I had called that prospect in the Spring of last year, generated interest in our client’s services, qualified the opportunity, and secured an introductory meeting for them. Their ROI on our services just went through the roof! But…it took almost 18 months to come to fruition. Be patient - and remember that results and ROIs on marketing efforts can take months to be fully realized.

It hit me tonight as I was developing conversation guides for a new lead generation campaign we will be kicking off soon how very little time we have to catch the interest of our prospects.

Bottom line, executives and decision makers are super busy, have more responsibilities than ever before, and are being pressed to achieve greater results in less time. We have to convince them to give us a precious slice of their time and attention, and we have to do it in about a minute’s time. More than that, you risk losing them.

So how do I do this? It helps to keep it simple. I want to say just enough to make them curious enough to want to hear more. Because truly that’s what we’re after, right? I’m not trying to convince them to buy anything…that would take a lot longer than the 60 seconds I’ve been given. I just want them to be interested enough to agree to further conversations…and that’s the goal. Plain and simple.

The strategy of nurturing leads through the buying cycle until your prospect is ready to buy should be an important part of any company’s overall marketing plan. Generating new leads for your services is important but better handling the leads you already have in your pipeline is just as – if not more – important. A good lead nurturing program keeps the right mix of short and long-term leads in the funnel.

In my work with clients, I see many struggle with how to truly nurture these relationships that they have worked so hard to begin with prospects. Calling or emailing every month to “check in” or sending a periodic newsletter just does not work that well. Effective nurturing uses a progressive slate of content to compel your prospects to take their next steps in the buying process with your company as you expand upon ideas they find valuable.

My colleague, Ardath Albee, has written a wonderful playbook for B2B marketers who are looking to create content that will engage with prospects online, educate and inform them with information they need to solve their business problems, and turn them into buyers.

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale is the guide for teaching you just how to build powerful, revenue-producing relationships with your buyers through contagious content that will attract higher interest and interactive online dialogues.

Ardath also offers excellent tips and tools to create content your salespeople will actually use!  ??To learn more, check out:  http://www.emarketingstrategiesbook.com

It’s that time of year when we’re all assessing the strength of our sales pipeline in order to build our plans and budget for achieving next year’s revenue targets.

A critical factor that must be examined is not only the size of your pipeline (in terms of number and size of deals forecasted to close) but the true health of it.

Here are some questions to get you started:

How much of your current forecast is real and gives you confidence as you plan your budgets for 2010?

Assuming all forecasted deals close as predicted, how many more deals will you need to meet your 2010 numbers?

Assuming only 50% of forecasted deals close, what’s the impact to your lead generation plans for 2010?

According to CSO Insights’ 2009 Sales Optimization study of over 1800 B2B organizations, only 47% of forecasted deals actually close. This means that many companies have an over-inflated pipeline, providing false hope and an inaccurate assessment of what is truly required to generate the sales needed for next year.

Now is the time to drive out all subjectivity in order to achieve forecast and pipeline accuracy. A realistic diagnosis of the health of your 2010 pipeline is the foundation on which to base the critical budgetary and strategic decisions that you are making right now.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies and a colleague of mine, has decided to give away her best sales training programs & other goodies for F-R-E-E. If you visit the Great Sales Give right now, you can:

•    Download her most popular audio program, Developing Strong Value Propositions for F-R-E-E.

•    Register to WIN cool prizes: autographed books, CDs & more.

Each month, this internationally recognized sales strategist will give away something new. Click here to sign up now.

P.S. Fortune says Jill Konrath’s book is a “must read.” It’s been an Amazon Top 25 sales book for 3 years. She’s been featured in Success!, Inc., Selling Power, Entrepreneur, Business Journal, Wall Street Journal, New York Times & more.

I’m so angry right now…and honestly it takes a lot to make me mad. I have had the worst customer service experience ever and what’s ironic, it’s with a company that is in the business of “Customer Relationship Management”.

In Oct of 2007 I was looking for a CRM to use for our company and for the lead generation, qualification, and nurturing services we provide for our clients. I contacted a company that appeared to offer what I was looking for. I was the perfect warm lead for this company – I had a problem, it was costing me money and headaches, I wanted to fix it RIGHT now, and I had the money! Maybe I was too easy of a catch.

To make a very long story short, the salesperson (who I recently discovered is actually a co-founder of the company) misrepresented their system capabilities and their pricing during several of our phone calls, and of course I found this out only after paying for a year’s worth of service. Despite my repeated attempts at resolving this, I never received one returned call or a response to any of my emails to the company. I called at least 10 times leaving messages and sent multiple emails. Ultimately, I had to contact my credit card company to resolve the matter for me and I was given a credit on my card.

Earlier this week (2 years later!) I get an email from the company telling me my credit card will be billed for another year of service on Oct. 1st. When I called (got voicemail of course) and then emailed, I got a response that I never officially sent a letter of cancellation, so they are going to bill me $1100 to cancel, and if I took care of that today, they would be so kind as to not turn me over to a collection agency! WHAT?  Surely, this is a misunderstanding, right?

Nope! When I finally connected with a live person and shared my story of their unethical behavior (and I’ve got lots of documentation as proof), I was not only told I had to pay the fee (and if I did not I’d be turned over to collections), he tried to sell me a deal “good only today” on a new subscription!

Had he not listened to anything I said?

Their website touts that they are a “rare breed in our market, practicing the true meaning of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) within the halls of all our offices”.  Really? Who says?

If the President of this company happens to stop by my blog, here are some lessons to take to heart:

1) Never, never, never misrepresent your capabilities to a prospective customer. Long-term customer relationships are built on trust.

2) Don’t tell a prospect that the price of the service is going up the next day to persuade them to make a quick buying decision. And if you do tell them that, follow through and actually raise the price. See lesson #1, it starts with trust. Manipulation never wins in the end.

3) Return your customer’s phone calls and emails. Always! Oh and by the way, since you are in the business of customer engagement and relationship management, never answering a call live is probably not the best method of creating good feelings with customers.

4) Apologize for mistakes. Own up to them and let the customer out of the contract.

5) Put compassionate people on the phones with your customers who actually listen to what they are saying.

6) Live up to what your website says about you.

7) Embrace and understand “How you sell me is how you will serve me.” If you truly want to be a company that practices the “true meaning of Customer Relationship Management in the halls of all your offices”, it starts with the very first touch.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop for now. I run my company and my team on the principles of honesty, trust, and doing what’s best for the client…. that’s the type of company that I will give my business and loyalty to any day of the week.

I was recently introduced to Nancy Nardin, the founder of Smart Selling Tools. If you are looking for some tools that can help you do everything from be more productive, to find more accurate prospect information, to creating proposals, check out the website here:

http://www.smartsellingtools.com/index.php

and her blog here:

http://smartsellingtools.wordpress.com/

I, for one, am going to checkout Xobni (under Productivity and Time Savers) to hopefully save me from email overload!

Would love to hear any tips and tools you all are using to do more with less resources and in less time.

Yesterday, I posted about my negative experience as the recipient of a cold call, and the 3 big mistakes this caller made. So now the question is:

“How can you proactively engage in an interactive call to get the desired outcome?

1. Read From a Script But…I like scripts. They create clarity for me and my team. I create them mainly to find the best way to explain our client’s services, their company and the value proposition they offer to potential clients. With a script we have a crystal clear way of communicating what they do and the problems they solve, and we’re in a better position to help the prospects we are calling understand too.

But…

A script is merely the launching pad for a business relationship. When the team interacts with clients (i.e. answers questions) they don’t use scripts. They set it aside and listen and…

2.       …Ask questions. You’ve got to ask questions like, ‘Are you having challenges with x?’ ‘How important is it to you to overcome this challenge?’ ‘Who else within your company is impacted by this?’ ??How can you expect to help someone if you know nothing about them or their challenges?

Prospecting is really about finding that 10-15% who are willing to talk/buy and figuring out what companies not to waste your time on. You do that by asking questions.

3.       Quit pushing. Pushing people for commitments before they’re ready means lost sales. I give my team a list and tell them that 15-20% of these people want and need the services of GE, for example. It’s our job to find them. The other 80-85% don’t and that’s fine. There’s no need to push. There’s just as much value in knowing who doesn’t want your services as knowing who does. ??(By the way, quit pushing does not mean giving up or not following up! It simply means that we can’t control our prospects willingness or timing to buy.)

Sometimes all you have to do is show someone you understand them and care about helping them solve their problems to move to the next step in the process on the spot.